[thinkmassive]

Everything you mention seems orthogonal to whether a coding evaluation is given as take-home or live.

I’m glad to have a vigorous discussion about code I wrote during my own time. Go ahead and create a standard rubric that covers the project itself and the follow-up discussion. This is what I’ve done when hiring. It’s great because it demonstrates the employer knows what they’re looking for from the role, and that the team has sufficient experience to conduct a conversation in the relevant domains.

When I hear there’s a minimal number of interviews, and the main one is an intense live leetcoding session, I tell them I have no interest but if anything changes on their end I’ll be glad to provide sample work and have a discussion about it. The problem is these live sessions are extremely draining to prep for, provide no gain for the candidate (unlike writing code that can be retained), and they reveal practically nothing about the company.